Processual and Typo-Morphological Reading Method.The Case of Birgu, Malta
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Proceedings of the 3rd ICAUD International Conference in Architecture and Urban Design Epoka University, Tirana, Albania, 24-26 October 2019 PROCESSUAL AND TYPO-MORPHOLOGICAL READING METHOD.THE CASE OF BIRGU, MALTA. Antonio Camporeale LPA Laboratorio di Lettura e Progetto dell’Architettura, Sapienza Università degli Studi di Roma Via di Ripetta 123, Rome, Italy Anna Paola Sancineti Indipendent Architect Via Giusepe Petraglione,Bari-Italy [email protected], [email protected] ABSTRACT This paper focuses on a precise analysis method about the study of the urban form, through the typological and processual reading of urban fabrics and buildings that compose it. Studying the urban transformations that took place during the course of time, in a central Mediterranean nodal place, allows us to understand the ways in which the contributions of each new culture have been introduced and involved in the accumulation process, material and immaterial, that is typical of an isolated/insular territory. The island of Malta, for its particular position, has always been a singular point, a crossroads of cultural exchanges in the Mediterranean. At the same time, isolation contributed to maintaining and conserving the characteristics of places and materials that man transformed. The interest of this research is about the way of transfer and sedimentation of constructive experiences that merge between them and finally find, in the island, a new place of experimentation. The case study is the city of Birgu, located in the Grand Harbor of Malta. Reconstructing the formative phases of the city means investigating the way in which the indigenous constructive culture has accepted external needs and habits, merging into a new urban unity. It is interesting because it presents singular episodes related, for example, to the development and adoption of the Palazzo type inserted into the masonry urban fabric. It presents element of interest for the urban changes caused by the bombardment trauma occurred during the World War II too. 283 Proceedings of the 3rd ICAUD International Conference in Architecture and Urban Design Epoka University, Tirana, Albania, 24-26 October 2019 Therefore, through the reading of the formative process of routes/paths, through the identification of urban polarities, through the recognition of the building typology and finally through the study of the fusion and transformation process of urban fabrics, it is possible to prepare a base of knowledge useful to the future project, to the successive and physiological transformations that the city will necessarily have to undergo. KEYWORDS: Urban Form, Process, Reading Method, Typo- Morphological, Malta. 284 Proceedings of the 3rd ICAUD International Conference in Architecture and Urban Design Epoka University, Tirana, Albania, 24-26 October 2019 INTRODUCTION The contents of this essay are part of a wider research on the relationship between building types and urban fabric, concerning the area of the Grand Harbur in Malta. The analysis method is related to the typo-morphological school: the ‘operating’ history, the history that helps to compose the basis of the events through which the community takes shape, gives form to the architecture that it produces. The formation of a city, and in particular of a Mediterranean city, cannot be separated from the study of the main historical events that have characterized its phases of evolution. The historical events together with the data recovered in different archives, relating to the buildings and the transformations they have undergone over time, allow the conjectural and logical reconstruction, instrumentally and appropriately divided into different phases, of the city formative evolution. The application of this method to the city of Birgu in Malta produced interesting, albeit partial, results which try to hypothesize the formative phases of this city. HISTORY OF BIRGU, VICTORIOUS CITY The existence of the ‘Borgo a mare’ (Castrum Maris) is known as early as before 1530, the date of the arrival of the Knights of the Order of St. John in Malta, as a fishing village and also as a small port city. Following the arrival of the Order on the island and the conspicuous fortification and rebuilding works, the village was renamed ‘Città Nuova’, then called ‘Vittoriosa City’ following the events of the siege of the Turks in 1565. Birgu is spread over a peninsula just 800 meters long and has a maximum width of 400 meters. Without considering the area of the fort, one could associate the shape of the promontory of this settlement with an isosceles triangle. To the north, on the Manderaggio side, it faces Calcara Creek, while to the south the St. Lawrence Valley overlooks the Dockyard Creek. The highest points of this area are about 25/30 meters above sea level (St. Philip Hill and Cavalier Hill). The formation of one of the oldest cities in Malta on a small peninsula is witnessed, since ancient times, by the presence of the ‘Forte a Mare’, later called ‘Forte Sant’Angelo’, and is suggested by the hidden position inside a natural reservoir, ideal for sheltering galleys, sailors and merchandise. The Arabs, who called this port Port of the Galleys, were the first to build on the most extreme point of the Birgu peninsula, sheltered by the natural limit of the sea, a castle with 285 Proceedings of the 3rd ICAUD International Conference in Architecture and Urban Design Epoka University, Tirana, Albania, 24-26 October 2019 stone blocks obtained from the remains of an ancient Phoenician temple dedicated to the deity Astarte, later dedicated to Juno by the Romans. The castle itself will be known as ‘Castrum Maris’, ‘Castello a Mare’ or ‘la Rocca’. The village, sheltered from this fortification, was named the ‘Borgo del Castello’, hence the name Birgu, which indicates a city or neighborhood built near a guard castle (from the Maltese Borg). The peculiarity of the promontory on which the castle stands resides in its ability to control a wide visual range of the harbour invasion system for the sighting of possible enemy incursions. The scarce attention of the ancient authors to the events that involved this settlement, at least until the arrival of the Knights, helped to consolidate in the historiographical tradition the opinion that this place was a fishing village built on the slopes of a large and imposing fortification, in which the population took refuge in case of pirate raids. In fact, beyond the objective lack of documents that can testify and verify this news, it is clear that this is the most protected and therefore adequate area of the whole island for ships entering the port. From archaeological finds it is thought that this area was inhabited long before the Romans conquered Carthage and the Maltese archipelago during the Punic wars of 216 - 218 BC. All historical information prior to 1530, documented and related to this settlement, actually concerns the fort and its castellan, imposed from time to time by the dominant dynasties, and the diocese of the village: many lords of the castle were responsible for the security of the Great Port until the arrival of the Knights. After the defeat of the Arabs (in 1090) by the Normans, and then with the re-conversion of the population to the Catholic religion, the church dedicated to the Mother of God and then to the Nativity of the Virgin was built, carved into the rock of the fort. According to some historians, this church was one of the oldest in the whole island, the first diocese in the Maltese islands together with that of Mdina, the ancient capital. During the period of Angevin domination substantial works were carried out inside and outside the castle (and above all on the church of Santa Maria and Sant ‘Angelo). After the occupation of the islands by the Aragonese in 1283, the church of San Lorenzo a mare, dedicated to the Aragonese martyr saint, subsidized by the Spanish kings, was built by the Spanish sailors. In this period the fort was renamed ‘di Sant’angelo’, perhaps in honor of the Count Angelo de Melfi who had ruled the island since 1352. Furthermore, the population reaches 4000 inhabitants and the expansion of the Borgo begins, probably facilitated by the strategic 286 Proceedings of the 3rd ICAUD International Conference in Architecture and Urban Design Epoka University, Tirana, Albania, 24-26 October 2019 position of the port and by the shelter that offered the fort in case of pirate raids. Inside the castle was built the house of the castellan, in Sicilian-Norman style. When Malta passes to the Catalan-Aragonese kingdom, from 1392 to 1395, the Maltese baronial families oppose the new sovereigns; from the fort of Birgu the castellan opposed to the new kingdom, but the last resistance to the new domination are conquered. Fernando de Podio becomes the new lord of the castle. The chaplain of Castrum Maris was assigned to the chaplain of King Bernard Ginestre, while the governor of Sicily had the count Antonio Ventimiglia imprisoned in the fort of Birgu, where he died in 1413. In 1423 a rebellion started in Gozo and spread throughout the island, in Birgu the castellan Monroy and his wife remain stranded in the Castrum Maris, but in 1427 the siege of Monroy ends. From 1430 the Castellania del Forte belongs to the de Nava family. The last Aragonese lord of castes ‘de Nava’, who built a chapel dedicated to Saint Anne, built inside the fort before the arrival of the Knights, had to leave it to the Order’s Grand Master L’Isle Adam, who on 26 October 1530 arrived in Malta and took up residence in the de Nava palace inside the Fort. Seven years after the expulsion from Rhodes by Suleiman the Magnificent, the Order of the Knights of St.